Lapsed Time
by Shieldage
Summary: Poor Olaf the Troll. Exiled to a moment he can't escape as the world crumbles around him.


BtVS by Whedon and Mutant Enemy. Lines of dialogue from Buffy episode Triangle through _BuffyWorld. _Elements of a Stephen King novel (see below)

Response to Faela's Challenge at _Twisting the Hellmouth_

* * *

There is a brightly lit shop full of items to be bought and sold, stories waiting to be told, and the air is clean and sweet. It is messy, but nothing is insurmountable. The world is fresh and full of promise. It is empty, but for one large slumberer, snorting happily through peaceful dreams.

* * *

Willow, having powered a spell meant to exile someone from her frame of reference, wonders where he'd been sent.

"I only care that he's not here, and I got this nifty souvenir," replies Buffy, accidentally crushing the last glass counter in the shop with an enchanted hammer, the only thing left of the troll.

Xander remarks that the 'place is trashed in a funny way'.

Buffy tries to make the best of the situation, but loses control of her emotions and begins to weep at the happiness and love she sees between Xander and Anya.

With a rainbow shimmer of energy, Olaf, the large, great red-bearded troll, whumpfs back into their world. For a second, he looks more _real_ then everything else.

There is a very loud, crushed ding.

It looks like they've found the invisible cash register.

Anya gives him a kick in the side of the face, but all her cursed ex-boyfriend does now is snore.

Everyone, sighing and groaning, moves Olaf back into the unsummoning circle.

"C'mon Will," Xander prods, quite unnecessarily. "Could you just _try_ not sending him a few seconds into the future?"

Willow doesn't understand why the spell didn't work the first time. She could stand up, go to the shelves and try to find a completely new spell to replace it... Would that be admitting defeat?

Glaring at Xander, she dismantles the old spell and puts it together a different way.

* * *

Olaf the Troll woke up in the place he had first been summoned to. The place of business was trashed and empty.

"Ha!" he chortled. "They have been unable to move my bulk between worlds and abandoned this place to me. It is a pretty color, but I desire more than to make this into my longhouse! I desire life, ale, and breeding!"

He upended the last remaining glass counter in the magic store and laughed at the sight of it. He broke off the sound of joy, uneasy, for the glass had not made as much tinkling as it should have and his own laughter was not quite music to his ears...

"No matter," he said as he left the Magic Box. "Give me _ale_!"

He yelled this to the empty street.

"They have abandoned this town to me?"

"This ale is stale."

"This food is bland."

"This is wrong."

"Have they abandoned this _world_ to me?"

"This pretty simulacrum within this shop of lacy things is not pleasing to my touch..."

"Nor is this one..."

"Or this... Have you all abandoned me?"

He repeated this many times more, in a quiet tone devoid of his normal boom and bluster.

It was at this point that he heard the sound of worms turning leaves into mulch a thousand-fold, of dried hair crackling in a fire, of thin ice breaking beneath your over-sized feet.

Then the first building fell at the outskirts of town.

They grew closer.

"Hah! Olaf is not threatened by puny things without arms!"

He grabbed one of the hungry mouths and ripped it apart.

There were a lot more than one. He killed a lot more than one.

They were encircling the town and he had to retreat.

He soon ran out of small cars to throw.

His hammer proved useless and brittle in his hands, the magic having moved on with the rest of the world.

Hours later, Olaf stood at the last bit of everything, but he was no match.

##

Without eyes, they had seen him.

##

Goodbye.

* * *

_Crossover Novel: 'Langoliers' by Stephen King, gives the bright, fresh world of the immediate future that waits for us to arrive. It's where the unconscious troll was first sent, but most of the novel happens in the worn up, used reality of 'a few seconds past'... The shadows of time, destined to be swept away, where everything and _everyone_ somehow left behind is food._


End file.
